Candice on Cancer, Part V

Well, this is it guys. The final instalment of the transcript of Candice’s ‘Statera Podcast’ interview. I’m surprised that so many of you read it. It’s almost as though you’ve been trained to do so by some kind of top secret government agency. Well done, comrades!

I’m really hopeful that now that all this data is in print for posterity, it can help others to piece this story together. Auma has already prepared some stellar detective work for your perusal.

Even Candice has acknowledged that some significant errors regarding her story have made it into print, and that’s a cause for concern. So many people are affected by cancer, and it’s tempting to believe even the most far-fetched of stories, especially when they appear to have passed through the fact-checking process that we all expect from reputable news agencies. My hope is that we can sort fact from fiction once and for all and keep this particular Fox out of the henhouse.

Candice on Cancer, Part 5: We’re not in Candice anymore, Toto!

CANDICE: “I mean, when I cured myself, like, convincing my family that I’d done – like, because I was in Australia, curing myself, and they were in England – going back and even convincing them that I *had*…because they’re still eating their Macca’s [McDonalds], you know, they’re still drinking and whatnot. And trying to, like, I bought them all juices and was, like, saying, ‘hey, you can do it this way, la la la.’ It was just very, very hard, and they just didn’t want to. They didn’t want to believe, I don’t know…because it breaks people’s habits. They don’t want change, and blah blah blah.

            But even now – and I never thought they would change – more and more I’m getting, you know, my mum messaging me, ‘Candice, have you got any natural remedies for this, that?’ And she’s…she would have been a pharmaceutical woman, you know? Like ‘a pill for every ill.’ But she’s not! Like, she’s asking me for natural remedies and stuff. And to me, that’s major. She, even when I said I’d cured myself of it, she was just like, ‘Oh, you know, but the doctors still, blah blah blah, they have their place,’ which, I agree.

But I was just like, ‘But mum! I have just done it with food! Come on!’”

SNARY: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Sure. That’s all you need!”

CANDICE: “But now, but now it’s happening. And, yeah, a lot more people are really waking up, like to…like I said, the family that I was living with when I got diagnosed, they, yeah, they too were just like, ‘No, the medical way, the medical way, the medical way.’ But then when they saw that that didn’t work, then they started, like, ‘Woah!’ and then, you know, they started buying some organic bits coming in the house, and, you know, my cancer affected everyone around me. I know that. Like, in a bad way, but ultimately a good way. You know, we dealt with the bad, and, you know, they lived through it with me, which I really appreciate and love them for, but now they’ve got something out of it.

Because, you know, little bits and bobs. And even, you know, my ex [boyfriend] is telling all his workmates…all these big lads…up in the mines, that his ex [girlfriend] cured herself of cancer, and, like, get [sic] emails through to send my little e-book to ‘em and stuff. And it’s just like, people are gradually spreading the message. Even my partner now – avid meat-eater, like, meat only, meat only – but, now he’s [sic] doesn’t eat meat. Like, and I’ve not pushed that on him…and now he’s spreading it to his, like, big lads up in the mines, you know, like ‘she’s cured herself of cancer, blah blah blah, the healthy way,’ and saying the benefits that *he’s* feeling. Without having it forced on him – he’s fully chosen that way. And I think we’re all doing our little bit, and spreading a little bit of message [sic] and stuff.”

After talking about ‘The Liberators’ for a while (a group of people who infiltrate train carriages and brainwash ordinary citizens into dancing to their tune), they have the following exchange:

SNARY: “I love the internet.”

CANDICE: “ME TOO! [emphatically slapping the table] I love it. I hope that they don’t, like, one day govern it so much that you can’t get…because apparently in America, like, they’re stopping, like, some certain pages going out, like…”

SNARY: “Yeah, I know. It’s always going to be there, but there’s more…it’s too late. There’s more of us than there is of them. So, you know, we’ll be fine.”

CANDICE: “Power to the people!”

There’s that sinister “them” again. I hate to break it to you, Snary, but I have it on good authority that the US government is actually cloning Violet, in a dastardly plot to infiltrate the internet with thousands of little super-charged cyborg Violets obsessed with truth, accuracy and reason!

CANDICE: “I had the website all set up and that, and I’ve decided that I need to offer more, I need to keep, you know, giving more content, so I’m getting the whole website redesigned, and that should be out within, like, a few weeks. I’ve got a Facebook page…”

Yeah, we know.

CANDICE: “…which is ‘healthycandy.me,’ I’ve got DreamCatchers International, which has got a [Facebook] page, it’s not got a website yet. There’s loads of different portals […] there’s loads of different health portals that I’m surrounded by that people can just tap into, and just take what they want, what resonates with them. Like, I’m not saying, you know, ‘go and juice, go and do everything,’ because, you know, it doesn’t work for everyone. Just take what you think…but mostly, is [sic] listen to yourself. Like, I’m seeing a magnetic…”

SNARY: “…what resonates with you.”

CANDICE: “Yeah, exactly! And it’s like, your body’s actually really telling you. You know, all the time, your intuition, your everything. And it’s, like, whether you choose to listen. So I’m seeing a magnetic, a biomagnetic healer. Totally didn’t believe in it, but he was like, ‘I’ll give you a free session, la la la,’ so I was like, ‘oh, I’ll give it a try.’

He told me, after that session, everything that was going on. He was like, ‘Oh, you’ve got a bad lower back, you’ve got a bad knees [sic], you’ve got bad hips,’ because I’d just *smashed* it at the gym. Like, I was doing five times a week, and now I’ve had to stop. And he just knew.

And I was like, ‘Oh, I’ve just been laying here while you’ve been putting magnets on me, there’s no way…you could have known that.’

And now I go and see him, well, he only sees me, like, every…when my body says. So I got my partner in there, and he said to him, ‘Oh, I can’t, you know, your body doesn’t need me to see you.’ You know? He was just like, after that one time, that was it.”

Wow, it’s really miraculous that these practitioners of fantasy-based medicine are able to sense Candice’s need for attention. I wonder why the boyfriend’s body didn’t need to be seen, but the pretty blonde model’s did? The universe is so mysterious.

CANDICE: “But with me, he thinks next time might be my last one, which is my fourth. But I just go into such a deep state of mediation with him that, with Rishi doing my other energy healing, with Edgar doing my biomagnetic stuff, and me looking after myself, with my naturopath at my side, kinda thing, and then doing the health, I’m surrounded by…well, I’m [sic] believe I’m doing complete health, now. Like, I’ve stopped drinking, stopped coffee, stopped meat, stopped dairy, and I’m just back to pure health, but not so extreme.

And so, I want to advocate that way. So on my website, it will be that, but it’s all about a balance. Like, if you want to have a coffee, you want to have a wine, you want to have, you know, a bit of steak...”

SNARY: “…a bit of chocolate.”

CANDICE: “Have it, yeah! Go for it. Like, because your mind will just be doing you in anyway, you know? Thoughts are more toxic, and stress is the number one. So it’s like, do it, but just balance, you know? Have your wine, but you know, have a green juice, like, before or something, you know?”

A balanced diet? Well, this pretty much describes what all of us are already doing. I’m not sure why we need a website for that.

SNARY: “Coconut water is fantastic too.”

CANDICE: “Yeah, coconut in your wine, it’s all a balance.”

Snary laughs, but Candice doesn’t. I don’t think she was actually joking.

CANDICE: “That’s the only way people can live, really. Because we know that stuff’s there now, you know? We’ve had it, we’re conditioned to want it and stuff. So just treat yourself, but just, I say, eighty twenty. Eighty twenty rule.”

Candice is referring to the “Pareto principle,” which I couldn’t be bothered Googling for you. I’m tired, people. So tired. I need to go and have a bit of steak, and a bit of chocolate, and put the wine in the coconut and drink them both up.

CANDICE: “I’m so grateful for the cancer, it was the best gift I could have given myself at the time, you know? Like it got me out of what I was lying to myself about anyway, you know? So it’s like, I could have taken the easy route and just not done it in the first place, but then I had to have the big things. Like, ‘Oh, you haven’t listened this time, [and] you haven’t listened this time, okay, you’re not gonna keep listening? Fine, we’ll f*** you up,’ you know?”

That was either Candice’s cancer, or her body, or the universe, or all three, telling her, ‘we’ll f*** you up.’

Finally, Snary thanks her for the “honour” of allowing him to share her story, and expresses the hope that it may help others.

CANDICE: “That’s what I want to do. That’s the main…I feel like, what 28 year-old gets cancer and cures it, and just does nothing with it? Like, I feel like I have to, that’s why [I’ve got] a graphic designer and what [sic], so I can put all my skills into…”

SNARY: “It’s a responsibility, but it’s a pleasant responsibility.”

CANDICE: “It is! Well, I get people asking me, like, information and stuff all the time. People that are, like, have been diagnosed and stuff. I can give them an alternate, you know, advice to what they’ve been given at the hospital. So to me it’s just like, I’m not saying, ‘don’t do that,’ but just listen, I’ve done it, I’ve been through it, I’ve done the their way [sic]. So I’m kinda glad that I done it [sic] their way. I lost my thyroid, but I’m growing it back, you know?”

SNARY: “But it’s a valuable lesson.”

CANDICE: “It is, because I can say to people, ‘Look, I’ve done their way, and it didn’t work for me. But then I’ve done another way. So before you step into their way, how…you probably had this cancer…’ – I had mine for twelve years, apparently – so it’s like, ‘you probably had this for years, why do you need to cut it out now? Why do you need to radiate it now? Why don’t you just take six months off, go and do a juice detox, do a bit of water fasting, you know, all that; and do that and then see where you are in six months, and *then* cut your body open,’ you know?”

SNARY: “Yeah, exactly. That’s the best way to do it.”

CANDICE: “That’s the best way I can say it. It’s like, ‘stop for a second.’”

SNARY: “But you have to overcome the fear. That’s the main thing.”

CANDICE: “It is very scary, because you are surrounded by people that are telling you that you’re gonna die. So you just need to be, yeah, meditate and go in yourself and be strong.”

After some last-minute pleasantries, that’s pretty much it.

On her Facebook page, Candice and her supporters are baffled as to why we’re questioning some elements of her story. I won’t repeat all the childish and woefully ungrammatical insults Candice’s supporters are hurling at incredulous visitors, but I’ll cite one comment that sums up their attitude: “I don’t understand why you can’t let people be with their lives, choices and beliefs?”

I’m going to answer that question.

After listening to the whole podcast, I think what people say about Candice is true. I think she’s probably a ray of sunshine. She’s gorgeous, she’s effervescent, she’s relentlessly cheerful, and she is nice to those people who don’t question her story or resist her aggressive proselytising.

She’s not very bright. She’s not very articulate. I think she has genuinely failed to understand much of what has happened to her, and doesn’t have the mental capacity to filter what she hears. Unfortunately, she’s also convinced of her “intellect,” her calling, and the superiority of her magical intuition. She comes across in the podcast as profoundly egocentric, and the alternative medicine ethos nurtures that. I hope she’ll grow out of it.

I don’t doubt that Candice had thyroid cancer, and as a very unwell person myself, I actually have tremendous sympathy for her. Her personal story is just that – a personal story. She has license to muddle fact with fiction as much as she likes, if it makes her feel better. But she voluntarily told her story to the public, so she invited scrutiny. That’s the deal. That is true of any book, interview, academic paper, scientific study. The world is not obliged to accept information uncritically, especially when it contradicts sound, tested principles. In fact, subjecting information to criticism and dialogue is part of good scholarship and good sense. It’s also kind of a joy, discussing new ideas – flaming bad ones, debating the merits of good ones.

As for why we’re focusing on Candice in particular, that’s also very easily explained. Candice is the third young Australian woman whose cancer story has fallen apart in recent weeks. They just keep popping up, like the heads of Cerberus. First, Jess Ainscough died of cancer after rejecting conventional medicine and publicly endorsing Gerson Therapy. Then Belle Gibson, still mourning for her friend Jess, tearfully admitted that she was “mistaken” about her cancer diagnosis, while her long history of willful deception was exposed in the media.

Before the dust had even settled on that controversy, Candice appeared in the tabloids blissfully spruiking pineapple enzymes and claiming she had cured her own cancer. Candice admitted the errors in those articles only after Violet and others brought them to her attention, affirming the virtue of dissent. But Candice still doesn’t understand the gravity of her deception, and the very great harm it may do. And though she now insists that she never said she cured her cancer herself, or that she cured it with pineapple, this podcast affirms that she did in fact make those claims.

Even in just this final instalment of the transcript, she states 7 times that she cured her cancer herself:

“I cured myself...I was in Australia, curing myself...even when I said I’d cured myself of it...I was just like, ‘But mum! I have just done it with food! Come on!’...my ex [boyfriend] is telling all his workmates…that his ex [girlfriend] cured herself of cancer...Even my partner now...he’s spreading it to his [workmates]…like, ‘she’s cured herself of cancer’...I feel like, what 28 year-old gets cancer and cures it, and just does nothing with it?”

She’s equally forthright about her plans to counsel other cancer patients to avoid or postpone medical treatment on the basis of her own miracle cure:

“I can give them an alternate, you know, advice to what they’ve been given at the hospital...I can say to people...‘you probably had this for years, why do you need to cut it out now?’”

Candice, if you’re reading this, I’ll spell it out in the simplest of terms: Jess died, Belle lied, and now you’re planning to give medical advice to cancer patients based on a false story about curing your own cancer. That might be very dangerous, especially if someone dies after taking your advice.

And to answer Candice’s supporters, why are we focusing on Candice specifically? Why now? Because it’s in the public consciousness now. Because we have an opportunity to avert a crisis. Because prevention is better than cure.